Behind the Book by Roderick Townley

Lights out. Can’t get to sleep. My wife’s voice in the darkness: “Tell me a story.” This happens a lot, and every time Wyatt asks me I feel a touch of panic—performance anxiety, I guess you’d call it. Finally I came up with: “Once upon a time, there was, let’s see, a cobbler who made a strange-looking shoe, a shoe that fit nobody. And yet everyone...